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Monthly Archives: December 2007
Is Cramer Advocating Index Funds?
One of the most effective ways to sell anything is to tell your mark that he’s special, and that your product isn’t suitable for just anyone, you know. The masses? The great unwashed? They can make do with mass-market products. … Continue reading
Posted in investing, personal finance, stocks
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Can a President Delegate the Economics Stuff?
John McCain says that he’s "really never understood" economics, and that he might give responsibility for economy to a more financially-literate vice-president. Is that realistic? I think that maybe it is. There are certain areas where a president really has … Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy, Politics
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Albert Lord: The Deathwatch Begins
How did Albert Lord become CEO of Sallie Mae? He hardly showered himself in glory during the whole debacle with Chris Flowers, during which time he was so busy refusing to negotiate on the sale price that (a) the entire … Continue reading
Posted in defenestrations, stocks
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ACA Reminds the Markets of the Importance of Counterparty Risk
Here’s the chart of ACA’s share price, from when it went public at the end of 2006 at $13 per share, through to yesterday, when it was delisted at $0.31 per share. Today, S&P finally got around to slashing ACA’s … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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Morgan Stanley: What Did CIC Know, and When Did They Know It?
Tinbox, in the comments to my last Morgan Stanley post, makes a very good point: that China Investment Corp must have been given lots of material non-public information in advance of Morgan Stanley’s Q4 earnings announcement. I don’t know how … Continue reading
Ralph Cioffi, Free at Last
On December 3, Roddy Boyd reported that Ralph Cioffi wanted to leave Bear Stearns, but that the bank didn’t want him to leave. Well, it looks like he got his wish. Cioffi left Bear last week, albeit not in the … Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds
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Morgan Stanley: Yet More Proof That Stock Moves Make No Sense
I puzzled yesterday over the question of why Goldman Sachs fell in the wake of spectacular earnings. Today, it’s the other way around: how on earth is Morgan Stanley’s stock rising in the wake of losing $3.56 billion last quarter? … Continue reading
Peter Schiff on the Housing Market and the Rescue Plan
I had some harsh words last week for Peter Schiff, which prompted a comment from Jack: Taking on Schiff? Get ready for a barrage of hate mail from him and his lackeys! In fact, I got no hate mail at … Continue reading
Posted in housing
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Morgan Stanley: Eminently Stoppable
Morgan Stanley’s Q3 earnings were bad. "Mack Smacked" was the Portfolio headline, reacting to a lower profit (just $1.54 billion, John Mack’s first quarterly earnings decline) and a nasty $940 million write-down on bad loans. Ah, those were the days. … Continue reading
Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition
Is Housing Becoming Disconnected from Income? On the hook for £100bn – it’s “business as usual” at Northern Rock Very cool global GDP animation Closing the mortgage barn door: "Incentives to follow prudent lending procedures did not ‘erode,’ as Bernanke … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Why David Viniar Didn’t Cause Goldman’s Shares to Fall
Any given stock, on any given day, even if that day sees the release of an earnings report, moves in an essentially random direction. If you want to see what’s happened to Goldman Sachs shares, don’t look at where they closed today compared to where they closed yesterday: look at where they are now compared to a month, or a quarter, or a year ago.
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In Praise of Kevin Martin
Very few people have anything nice to say about the FCC’s Kevin Martin. The WSJ’s Amy Schatz has a rollicking overview of all the different constituencies he’s managed to piss off since taking over in 2005 – the latest are … Continue reading
Posted in Media
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The WSJ Still Has Editorial Independence
Rupert Murdoch has installed his hand-picked man, Robert Thomson, as the boss of WSJ editor Marcus Brauchli. That doesn’t violate the letter of the agreement Murdoch made to preserve the WSJ’s independence: Thomson is nominally the WSJ’s publisher, and Brauchli … Continue reading
Posted in Media, publishing
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Why US Airline Service is So Bad
Pico Iyer wants to know why US airlines are so crap – why "a place in Northwest’s business class has afforded me less comfort than a seat in the economy class of the national airlines of Bolivia, Cuba and even … Continue reading
Will the ECB Start Buying CDOs?
We know that the Fed has pretty low standards when it comes to the collateral it will accept. But that doesn’t really matter, since the Fed is mainly relying on getting its money back from the banks it’s lending money … Continue reading
Posted in banking, bonds and loans, fiscal and monetary policy
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US Government Finally Getting Serious About Mortgage Reforms
Tyler Cowen thinks that the Fed should not have a consumer-protection function. I’m largely sympathetic – it’s not as though there’s any shortage of other regulators in Washington who could pick up the slack – but in reality the Fed … Continue reading
Posted in housing, regulation
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Goldman: Unstoppable
We knew that Goldman Sachs had been very successful shorting the mortgage market; we also knew that Goldman’s asset-management arm was very unsucccessful this summer playing the stock market. And we’re also used, by now, to Goldman setting new records … Continue reading
Posted in banking
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Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition
When a rose is not a rose: TAF is not "just" the discount window: "To call TAF the discount window without the stigma is like calling a person a corpse that is not dead." Subprime warning signs were made of … Continue reading
Posted in remainders
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Microlending in Mexico: Still Extortionate
BusinessWeek has a big (3,000-word) story on Mexican microlending, by Keith Epstein and Geri Smith. It’s heavy on the anecdote, and it comes down hard on one lender in particular: Ricardo Salinas’s Banco Azteca, which specializes in consumer finance. I’m … Continue reading
Posted in banking, development
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Illiquidity and Insolvency in the Commercial Real Estate Market
If you haven’t read Jesse Eisinger’s column on the CMBS market in the latest issue of Portfolio, do check it out – it’s very good. As a special bonus for Market Movers readers, I followed up with him this morning, … Continue reading
Posted in commercial property
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How Far Apart are Edwards and Obama?
Paul Krugman today lauds the populism of John Edwards, saying that the best strategy for a Democratic candidate is to "run with the populist tide". I wonder what he thinks of Matt Cooper’s latest piece in Portfolio, which says that … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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The Case Against Peak Oil
John Cassidy has a message for the peak-oil crowd: The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 … Continue reading
Posted in commodities
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Fishy Dealings in Trane Options
Trane is one of those invisible companies which is also omnipresent: it has operations everywhere from the Statue of Liberty to the Kremlin, and has even found its way into Portfolio’s offices in Times Square. It’s just been bought for … Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
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CMBS Market Claims an Australian Casualty
Foreign stocks are becoming increasingly popular among retail investors, for good reason, as the dollar continues to weaken. After all, if the US dollar slumps against the Australian dollar, say, then a stock which goes nowhere in Aussie-dollar terms can … Continue reading
Posted in commercial property
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Why Imports Should be Included in a Cap-and-Trade System
Judith Chevalier on Sunday took full advantage of the fact that her Economic View column in the NYT coincided with the end of the Bali climate-change conference. In it, she worries about "leakage" problems from a cap-and-trade system: the idea … Continue reading
Posted in climate change
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